The Department of Labor just issued the FY ’13 YouthBuild SGA (“Solicitation for Grant Applications,” which is DOL-speak for RFP), and $75,000,000 is available with 75 grants! We’ve written at least 20 funded YouthBuild proposals over the years, including two in the last funding round, so we’re more than a little familiar with this program, which is one of the best ways of funding job training for youth and young adults. DOL, however, has the following wrinkle stashed in the SGA, which is designed to prevent an agency that received a FY ’12 YouthBuild from applying this year:

An organization (based on its Employer Identification Number), may only be awarded one grant as a result of this competition. This requirement applies to both new applicants and previously funded applicants that have received a DOL YouthBuild grant in a previous competition. In addition, grantees who received funding from the Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 YouthBuild competition [SGA/DFA PY 11-06] are funded through December 2015 and these grantees (based on its Employer Identification Number) are not eligible to participate in this competition.

You’re a hungry grant-seeking puppy and there’s all this YouthBuild baloney in the refrigerator. Here’s how to pry the door open and get your snout in the YouthBuild trough.

Note that the restriction applies to a grantee’s Employer Identification Number (EIN). Many nonprofits have an affiliated nonprofit with a separate EIN. For example, lots of churches are 501(c)(3) organizations that have separate 501(c)(3) organizations to operate human services programs or outreach ministries. In a case like this, you can have the non-YouthBuild grantee entity become the applicant and the grantee become the partner.

Similarly, if your organization received a FY ’12 YouthBuild and wants in on this year’s action—and who wouldn’t—you can find a local nonprofit or public agency you know and love to serve as the applicant, while once again your organization slips in the partner role.

As a partner, you can still receive a large subcontract to provide such services as outreach, participant selection, training and/or case management, or smaller role by providing technical assistance to the applicant for a fee. At a minimum, the applicant collects a tidy administrative rake and the stature of being a federal grantee, while the partnering entity keeps churning the YouthBuild dollars. In some ways, this is similar to the fiscal agent relationship used by nonprofits in formation that we’ve written about before.

One one way to sell DOL on the partnership concept in through a deft targeting maneuver. Say your organization, which is an FY ’12 grantee, primarily serves African American participants. Find an organization in your community that works mostly with Hispanics or Pacific Islanders to serve as the applicant. Voila, the funding argument becomes: Let’s bring the expertise gained in providing YouthBuild services to one vulnerable community to bear on another. Suddenly, you’re not a greedy agency, you’re a hero! Such is the magic of grant writing and the knowledge gained from writing proposals since dinosaurs walked the Earth.

I know the above works, because we’ve done it a few times. For example, about eight years ago we had a large nonprofit substance abuse treatment client in a Northeast state for which we had written several funded SAMHSA substance-abuse treatment proposals. Along came an unusual SAMHSA RFP to provide treatment services to college students—but only Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) were eligible applicants.

Based on our advice, our client formed a partnership with a local IHE that agreed to serve as the applicant and fiscal agent, while providing access to students who would be the target participants. In return, the proposal included a huge subcontract under which our client provided essentially all project services, while the IHE administered the grant.

SAHMSA bought the concept and the grant was funded for over a million dollars, and it was one of only 12 or so awards made. Our client received solid funding for five years and applicant received free outpatient substance abuse treatment services for its students. If this can work with SAMHSA, which is a reasonably sophisticated federal agency, it should be possible to slip-slide around the YouthBuild applicant eligibility issue.